Dark commerce: How a new illicit economy is threatening our future
- Princeton Princeton University Press 2018
- xiii, 357 p. Includes bibliographical reference and index
A comprehensive look at the world of illicit trade. Though mankind has traded tangible goods for millennia, recent technology has changed the fundamentals of trade, in both legitimate and illegal economies. In the past three decades, the most advanced forms of illicit trade have broken with all historical precedents and, as Dark Commerce shows, now operate as if on steroids, tied to computers and social media. In this new world of illicit commerce, which benefits states and diverse participants, trade is impersonal and anonymized, and vast profits are made in short periods with limited accountability to sellers, intermediaries, and purchasers.